Critical Essay by Nathan Rothman
Evan Hunter's "The Blackboard Jungle" is the most realistic account I have ever read of life in a New York City vocational 
Evan Hunter 1926– Photograph by Mary Vann Hunterhigh school. I can testify to its accuracy, having had some years of experience in one of them, as has Mr. Hunter. His novel more than matches the sensations in some of the stories we have seen recently, in newspapers that have become happily school-conscious. But it is free of their distortions and dishonesty; it makes no easy moral assumptions nor does it arrive at righteous judgments. Mr. Hunter's North Manual Trades High—it is fairly typical—is a complex organism, the resultant of many forces, economic facts, social emotions, hostilities, suspicions. It can, if it is not to be considered irreparable, be handled only with understanding, courage, in the last analysis, humanity. Nothing else...
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